Artificial 2 openings

[RMB1]

Trinidad doubles: anyone else?

Can I try 7NT, and hope LHO does not have a heart to lead? ;)

 

Robin

[aguahombre]

Trinidad doubles: anyone else?

I suppose, since partner knows 7C was real, a Forcing pass applies, and Partner will bid 7NT with the heart Ace, since it is the only suit I can be void in.

[bluejak]

Well done, Robin. Of course, since partner has only got nine clubs, you only have 12 tricks, but fortunately LHO with his 10=0=3=0 is endplayed to give you the 13th.

 

In practice my partner doubled with this hand, and declarer claimed for one off. Me, I would have run the twelve card suit, after an ace lead: especially if the remaining two aces had been in one hand .....

 

It was one of the very few flat boards in th set. It was dealt by one of the four people at my table - possibly me - and my partner had a sense of humour, so I have always wondered. So I have had my once-in-a-lifetime twelve card suit at my table: I was the 6♣ bidder. So I have no agreements on how to bid one.

 

Interestingly, at team-mates' table, apart from playing this one in 7♥ doubled as well, of course, and running the entire suit, there were also four six level contracts, all off two aces: team-mates made theirs but beat the opponents' three. And that was that. :)

[campboy]

The key is that at some point, the hand will be so extreme that you have reached hand types that you can't describe by "system". You are on your own, your system won't help you. Then your job is to make the best of it.

Yes, that happens at some point. You get dealt a weak hand with bundles of tricks which is too extreme to be covered by your system, so you bid it in some way or other. Fine.

 

But after that -- after the first time that happens -- well, you both know what you are likely to do if you get a "hand type that you can't describe by system". You have explicit agreements about normal hands, but you now have an implicit agreement about the rest.

[NickRW]

...Another thing about leaving it to the TD: TDs are human and make mistakes. It is not the end of the world. But I think that the odds that the TD misjudges when he actually sees the hand are much smaller than the odds that the L&E committee misjudges when they set specifications when they can only try to imagine the hand.

 

Rik

Well, ignoring David's valiant attempts to derail the thread, I am not sure I agree. The L&E committee may be wrong or misguided in some cases - indeed I am sometimes critical - but, begruding credit where it is due, I don't think they are fools or make up silly rules deliberately. I mean - they are intelligent, experienced people whose heart is in the right place.

 

Compare that to the reality I have to face. I am in charge of the (entirely voluntary) directors rota at the local club. There are 9 of us that have (or will soon) be directing at one session or another. I'll leave me out of the equation as it is difficult to self evaluate objectively, but the other 8 have a (very) wide range of experience, confidence, and knowledge of the rules (or lack thereof). I cannot expect these 8 to give anything like consistent rulings based on rules that require a lot of judgement - I can expect them to be able to give a book ruling on something that is black and white.

 

Rules, to my mind, are hardly worth having if they can't be enforced in a consistent way - somewhat dumb, even irksome, though some of they may be.

 

Nick

[Trinidad]

The key is that at some point, the hand will be so extreme that you have reached hand types that you can't describe by "system". You are on your own, your system won't help you. Then your job is to make the best of it.

Yes, that happens at some point. You get dealt a weak hand with bundles of tricks which is too extreme to be covered by your system, so you bid it in some way or other. Fine.

 

But after that -- after the first time that happens -- well, you both know what you are likely to do if you get a "hand type that you can't describe by system". You have explicit agreements about normal hands, but you now have an implicit agreement about the rest.

So it doesn't matter whether my hand deviates from "normal" on the left hand side or the right hand side.

 

If I open 2♣ on ♠AQJT98765432 ♣2, does that mean that I will open it 2♣ the next time I get it? Does it mean that I will open ♠2♥3♦-KQJT9876543 with 2♣?

 

Does the fact that my 2♣ opening resulted in a dead bottom change any of this?

 

The only implicit information that you get, is that I don't know how to bid a freak hand. :)

 

Furthermore, just like one swallow doesn't mean it's Summer, one occurance doesn't create an implicit agreement. My son is learning multiplication tables. I just wish that he would implicitly agree on them after experiencing them once. ;)

 

Rik

[Trinidad]

...Another thing about leaving it to the TD: TDs are human and make mistakes. It is not the end of the world. But I think that the odds that the TD misjudges when he actually sees the hand are much smaller than the odds that the L&E committee misjudges when they set specifications when they can only try to imagine the hand.

 

Rik

Well, ignoring David's valiant attempts to derail the thread, I am not sure I agree. The L&E committee may be wrong or misguided in some cases - indeed I am sometimes critical - but, begruding credit where it is due, I don't think they are fools or make up silly rules deliberately. I mean - they are intelligent, experienced people whose heart is in the right place.

I don't assume in any way that the L&E committee are not intelligent and experienced. On the contrary. I don't know them, since I am not English, but I assume that they are the country's top TDs, or the equivalent.

 

What I mean to say is that the L&E committee tries to come up with some kind of specification (in HCPs, CCTs or ...) that describes precisely for TDs what a "preempt in disguise" (PID) looks like and where the border with the "rare beast" (RB) lies.

 

This means that the L&E committee is imagining a large set of possible hands, putting them in category PID or RB. And after that, they need to come up with a set of rules that can be used to derive whether a hand false in the PID or RB category.

 

This set of specifications needs to be simple, since players and TDs need to understand them. And if the set of specifications is simple, it cannot possibly do right. An (extreme and therefore clear) example where I think it does wrong is the 12-0-0-1 hand where a player opens 2♣ in an attempt to find out about the ♣A. That has nothing to do with "trying to fake strength when you really have a preempt", which is characteristic for a PID.

 

Another approach is to formulate the rules in general terms, rather than specifications. It could be something like: "It is illegal to open a hand that is generally considered a 1st hand preemptive opening (at the 2/3/4/5 level) with 2♣." Maybe you want to improve the exact phrasing, but I am sure that you get what I mean. (If you want to shift it and add a king, also fine, whatever.)

 

I admit that this approach is much vaguer than the exact specifications that are in current use. But surprisingly, it is more accurate. That is because you mentioned exactly what you intended to achieve. You wanted to prevent the Preempt In Disguise, therefore you use the term "preempt" (and mentioned the "Disguise": 2♣).

 

As an aside, in The Netherlands we had a political problem. A cabinet minister wanted to ban burqas (spelling?!?) in public. Obviously, it would be politically incorrect (as well as unconstitutional) to write a bill that simply bans burqas in public. Therefore, she came up with a description along the lines of "outfits or accessories that make the face not recognizable". There was a simple problem with that. She had managed to ban 10 burqas and an enormous amount of motor cycle helmets.

 

In bridge, we don't have this political problem. We can solve it by just calling the PID, a PID.

 

Compare that to the reality I have to face.  I am in charge of the (entirely voluntary) directors rota at the local club.  There are 9 of us that have (or will soon) be directing at one session or another.  I'll leave me out of the equation as it is difficult to self evaluate objectively, but the other 8 have a (very) wide range of experience, confidence, and knowledge of the rules (or lack thereof).  I cannot expect these 8 to give anything like consistent rulings based on rules that require a lot of judgement - I can expect them to be able to give a book ruling on something that is black and white.

 

Rules, to my mind, are hardly worth having if they can't be enforced in a consistent way - somewhat dumb, even irksome, though some of they may be.

 

Nick

 

Of course, it requires judgement to evaluate a hand and answer the question: "Is this hand generally considered a 1st hand preemptive opening (at the 2/3/4/5 level)?" But it is the kind of judgement that bridge players make all the time. Therefore, I expect that TDs and players will get it right.

 

Rik

[barmar]

Freaks are freaks -- by definition they're not normal hands, and are not generally covered by partnership agreements. I think it's silly to claim that a bid someone makes once with a freak establishes an implicit partnership agreement. Players necessarily improvise with freaks, and the next time a freak comes up you may pick a completely different way to bid it. In fact, if you somehow get dealt the same exact hand, you may bid it differently -- perhaps the way you bid it the first time didn't work out as well as you hoped. Or your experience has changed since then.

 

In general, I don't think that anything that happens just once automatically establishes a partnership understanding. Who remembers all the once-in-a-partnership things like this? Partnership understandings come from repeated actions, which establish tendencies that a regular partner is likely to know better than opponents.

[jeremy69]

Trinidad doubles: anyone else?

 

Of course if anyone else had intruded into a thread by posting what happened in a match it would have been moved to a separate thread somewhere deep in the bowels of the earth along with a complete set of imprecations about hijacking threads.

 

Oh, and it's helpful if you state the jursidiction where the hand took place (you have been asked before). I thought the Welsh Cup might be a tournament in Patagonia where regulations don't permit bidding at the seven level. :(

[jeremy69]

I think the regulations are designed for hands that fall within what might be called the normal ambit of things. For sure they also include 12 card suits hands and yes I accept that players don't really know how to bid them but as they happen once very sky-blue pink moon I don't really care that much. They are victims!

 

The trouble with allowing TD's to judge is that you won't get consistency. Of course they will consult which will help but you don't expect policemen to decide what the law is but to enforce what the politicians have decided it is whether they agree or not. I know we all have the idea of some kindly ancient policeman using discretion to save a soul but I don't think bridge is like that.

 

Frankly, I wish the L&EC would simply come up with a version of this regulation that they wouldn't keep changing. I think I am right in saying that there has been a tweak to the wording of this every year since it has come into being and, apparently from one thread here, maybe yet another in the pipeline.

 

 

That's a fair point. If it is decided that what is written contains something wrong it will have to be put right but I entirely accept that it should remain set in stone for some time to come as it is likely that any "improvement" to it will result in increased confusion.